Menu

SLT: Stretching, Lettuce and Tomato?

While most of being unemployed kinda sucked, the one thing that was awesome was being able to arrange my own schedule. 9:30am workout? Sure!

Months ago, Amanda Freeman, co-founder of Vital Juice emailed me and invited me to her new baby: SLT. I told her I’d love to try it, and forgot about it fairly quickly. One of the phrases that was used to describe it was “muscle-quivering,” and the only muscles I wanted quivering during marathon training were my quads.

With the marathon behind me, I finally got back to Amanda last week.

Fine, you can make my muscles quiver.

So you’re wondering what SLT stands for? Is it like a BLT but with stretching? Like, stretching/lettuce/tomato? No, but that would be good, too.

It stands for Strengthen, Lengthen, Tone, and is based on Amanda’s favorite class in L.A., Pilates Plus. In an interview with Well and Good, she says that SLT is like pilates plus a cardio workout, so you don’t feel like you need another workout.

If a regular Pilates class is done on a reformer, this is a megaformer. (Clearly, no messing around here.) The front and the back pad are stationary, but the “carriage,” (the middle thing) moves back and forth on springs. The springs are also used to control the level of resistance–it was yellow for light resistance, blue for heavy resistance.

When you do something like a lunge, the carriage goes back.

And my stomach also dropped. I thought I was going to fall and get stuck in between those springs and possibly chop off a leg and never be able to run again. But I actually made it through an entire class without the middle carriage slipping and me falling, so I consider that a major achievement.

I feel like I get workout amnesia during a difficult workout like this, so I’m not sure I accurately remember what we did, but the breakup of the 50-minute class was roughly 2/3 lunges and squats and roughly 1/3 planks and arms. It was difficult but was definitely a fun workout. The moving carriage (or moving pad of death, as I thought of it) required a ton of core strength (which I don’t really have) in the exercises where we needed to keep it stable. We used handles and pulleys for the arm part of the workout.

I consider myself a fairly normal-sized girl, but this class was full of TINY women wearing Soul Cycle shirts. I definitely felt like the biggest (and weakest) person in class. I wore that kinda-cute outfit, but I found myself wishing I’d worn a marathon shirt instead to show that I was tougher than I looked.

The class is $20 for the first time and $40 after that, so it’s probably not something I’d do on the regular, but I would definitely try it again. I’ve never tried a Pilates Reformer, and this makes me want to try one of those now, too.

I’ve heard I won’t be able to move Sunday. I’m looking forward to it.

What’s the most unusual workout you’ve ever done? (This so far qualifies as the most unusual for me.)

I want to do that workout! I don’t know if I’ve ever done anything truly weird…I plan to take a trampoline class soon, though. (And I know what you mean about tiny ladies — that’s how I felt during my one Dailey Method class. Like “where do your bones go???”)

My most unusual workout would have to be either pole dancing or “Aerial silk” (which was basically an hour of attempting to do trapeze-y circus tricks), but I think that reformer looks even scarier than the trapeze!

I would definitely want to try this class although $40 per class sounds a bit too much in this economy. My favorite workout is the Brooklyn Bridge Bootcamp (brooklynbridgebootcamp.com). It combines two of my favorite things: New York City views and high intensity cardio with strength training. We run across the Brooklyn Bridge and stop at every tower to do strength training with resistance bands. Throughout the hour we use the bridge as our equipment! They also offer classes at Central Park across the Mall which i have also tried. I have been addicted to it for more than two years. You should definitely check it out!

Looks like a cool class. But yikes! The price would definitely keep me away.
So, I stick to pretty basic workouts – nothing or unusual crazy to report (except for a salsa dancing class – that kicked my ass). But I have these moments about 30 minutes into spin classes when I just COMPLETELY zone out. I don’t pay attention at ALL to the instructor – at least to what he/she is saying.
It makes me wonder if my students do that 30 minutes into the classes that I teach. Hmmm.

Looks like a great workout! I do PIlates Reformer classes (and doing them twice a week while Marathon training has helped like no other!) and I can’t recommend it enough as both a way to get in your strength training (aka weights, which I will not do on my own) and as a supplement to running. Try a reformer class… you’ll love it! (And the results are pretty great!)